“Maybe,” Tim said evenly. “But rich and powerful people still want to stay rich and powerful. What do the billionaires in groups like Bilderberg or Uneeda want?”
Jessica went to take another drink but stopped when her Guinness glass was halfway to her lips. Something had just occurred to her. She set her glass back down.
“Speaking of Uneeda, what happened with that? They met right before he spoke. We thought maybe it was because he was speaking, and … What?”
Tim shook his head to say he had not pieced it together yet.
“Our sources couldn’t get us intel from inside,” he said.
“Do you think they know about him?” she asked.
“It’s possible,” Tim said.
“What if Uneeda members don’t just know about him, but they’re also like him? Also zombies?”
Tim considered this.
“Now that you mention it, it makes a lot of sense. I’ve heard crazier things, at least. The Uneeda membership are prominent people who tend to gradually fall out of the public eye. Now and then, a press release will come out saying one of them died at 101, but they haven’t been seen for years and the funeral’s always closed casket.”
Gears continued to turn inside of Jessica’s head.
“Are there any other members of the Uneeda society here at the convention?” she asked. “Besides the candidate, I mean.”
“I don’t think so,” Tim said, taking out his phone. “But lemme check. I’ve heard rumors that Hogson has petitioned to join. That would also make his reaction make sense during the debate. Maybe when he snarled, it wasn’t a threat to bite him, but instead to … not bite him.”
Tim sent a text and set his phone down on the bar. A few moments later, the phone vibrated and he picked it back up.
“Dan says there’s one,” he announced. “Cornelius Van Bergen. Old money from Albany. Descended from the first Dutch settlers. Ancestors were in timber way back in the day, and then in so many things people kind of lost track. Cornelius is very old now, but they say he doesn’t look a day over 95.”
Tim’s phone vibrated again.
“Dan also says he’s a guest of the delegation from New York. Doesn’t have any scheduled appearances, but he’s supposed to be around for part of the week. That’s all he can find for the moment.”
Jessica remained very still.
“What?” Tim said. “What are you thinking?”
“If we can’t follow the money, maybe we should follow the brains,” Jessica said, finishing her drink.
“What does that mean?” Tim asked.
“I feel like we should try to talk to Van Bergen and see if we can get something from him,” she said. “Depending on what the Uneeda Society actually is, he could know something more. Or be something more. That’s the story here. What does a zombie want? What does this candidate want? If we can figure that out, maybe we can show people something that will make them believe the truth. We can find something that won’t be dispelled by TV anchors fiddling with stethoscopes.”
“Yeah, like maybe zombies aren’t all identical,” Tim said. “In terms of their personalities, I mean. Maybe there’s a way he would talk to us.”
Jessica thought for a moment more.
“That … you could have something there,” she said, signaling to the barman that she would take another pour. “Maybe there are other zombies who don’t want one of their kind to be president. Like, they’re happy with what they have. They’re rich and can live in mansions and have brains delivered by a butler on a silver tray—and that’s enough. Maybe they also think that it’s crazy to want to go for the presidency.”
Jessica thanked the barman and accepted her new drink.
“So you want to find a dissenting voice?” Tim asked.
“I dunno,” Jessica said, taking a sip. “Or maybe we can pry them apart some other way. If there’s zombie solidarity, we could try to break it. Make this guy Van Bergen wonder if he’s heard wrong. Do something that gets him to talk.”
“I just don’t see—” Tim began.
“Look, do you have a better idea right now?” Jessica asked. “I spent half the night writing stories making it very fucking clear how this candidate could be a zombie, and what that projector-drone stunt was supposed to show. My own paper told me it was too extreme to run. Too wild. You saw my article after they were through with it. It’s like I was reporting on a projector malfunction, instead of, I don’t know, reporting that good evidence was provided that a major party candidate is a zombie.”
Tim silently shook his head, picked up his phone, and sent another text. A moment later it was answered.
“Dan says he’ll make some calls and get a line on Van Bergen’s whereabouts,” Tim said.
“Okay,” Jessica said. “When Dan finds him, I think I should be the one to make the approach.”
“What do you mean?” Tim said.
“Are you going to make me say it, Tim?” she replied. “You work for TruthTeller. I don’t think that’s a name that’s going to open the kind of doors to get to someone like Cornelius Van Bergen.”
“You’re forgetting that I met with McNelis, and he thinks we’re basically part of the campaign at this point,” Tim said, a bit defensively. “I would say we have some of the best access of any news outlet here.”
Jessica finished her second drink and pantomimed for a third.
“Maybe we can work together,” Jessica said. “That’s what they won’t be expecting. Good cop, bad cop.”
“I … I’m not sure that makes sense,” Tim said. “Do you usually drink this much?”
Jessica waved off his concerns.
“I feel more clearheaded than I’ve felt in days,” she replied. “We should do this more often.”
Tim seemed to think for a moment.
“Actually, I think I see how this could work,” he said.
“Right? Let’s do shots to celebrate.”
“You need to stop drinking now,” Tim said, sliding her Guinness away from her.
“Don’t infan … infantizz … infantilz …”
“Infantilize you?”
“Yes. It’s misogynistic. Men have been doing it to women for years.”
“Yes, but I literally can’t follow you when you’re drunk. Back in J-school, you always got confusing when you’d had more than three drinks.”
“What? Fine.”
“Now … you’re thinking of going in as the bad cop, right?” Tim said.
“Yes, obviously,” Jessica replied.
“So what if we do it like this?” Tim said. “You send a few feelers out to his staff, but shit they’re sure to ignore. Be cagy about what you want. They won’t initially respond because they don’t like your outlet. Then, I use my access to make contact. It’ll be confirmed that TruthTeller is down with the campaign, on the right side, yeah? I’m touching base because there’s an emergency. A fire we need to put out.”
Tim looked at Jessica, signaling that now she could take the baton and run with it.
“So you tell them that I’ve got a bee in my bonnet because someone told me something-something Uneeda zombies,” she said. “Like, I’ve heard that their candidate is going to make them a protected minority group when he’s president … or something. But you … you thought you better mention it because McNelis told you he wasn’t even going to float that the government was aware of the undead until after the first hundred days. And he was going to wait until his second term to fully reveal the truth about the Uneeda Society.”
“Yes!” said Tim. “Only I can’t get in touch with McNelis or his people for some reason—because he’s busy; because it’s the third night of the convention—and I’m worried you’re going to do something rash. You’ve heard that he, Van Bergen, is in Uneeda, so you’re going to try to get him to give a confirmation. You’ve got this idea that your story should run on the last night of the convention. So I need … I need to tell him to keep to the party line. The Uneeda line. Whatever.�
��
“Right,” said Jessica. “And then his staff will see the junk queries I sent. They’ll confirm I’ve been trying to get in touch.”
“Yes!” said Tim. “But I tell him that I’m going to handle everything … but that’s after I’ve gotten him to confirm what we need confirmed. On tape. Maybe on camera. It will already be too late for him. And then we take that up the ladder. Or just take it public. Make them have to deny it. Often, that’s the best approach. Make it so they all have to lie about it. So it really comes back and decimates him when it gets proven true.”
“That would …” Jessica said. “That would work, I think.”
Jessica looked into Tim’s eyes for a moment, feeling stunned.
“Okay,” she said, pushing back from the bar. “Then I’m off to send Cornelius Van Bergen some emails.”
THE FAKE NEWSMAN
Tim Fife stood outside the door to the arena suite and waited. A security guard in a dark suit and darker (somehow) sunglasses blocked his path. The guard remained motionless, his expression unreadable. He waited for the voice in his earpiece to come back with a response. Yea or nay.
Inside the suite sat Cornelius Van Bergen, who had not chosen to join the New York delegates on the convention floor.
Tim had let the guard know that he was with TruthTeller, shown his press pass, and said he needed to speak to Van Bergen on a matter of utmost importance. Said he was expected. That’d he’d already been in touch.
When it was clear from the man’s expression that this would not be enough, Tim had also managed to include the words “Jay McNelis” and “Uneeda Society” in his pleas. Those had been the magic words. The guard had spoken into a receiver in his coat, and then told Tim to wait.
Tim looked at the door, smiling politely.
Inside, his guts roiled.
It had taken Dan’s sources—whoever or whatever they were, Tim still did not know—several hours to locate Van Bergen’s precise location. This delay had given Jessica time to leave plenty of inquiries with his people, but it also cut things close. The festivities taking place on the stage had almost reached their culmination. The Governor of Indiana would take the podium shortly.
“Okay.”
Tim looked back up into the face of the imposing guard, whose face still seemed like stone.
“Excuse me?” Tim said. “Did you just say something?”
The guard looked Tim up and down, smiled like a snarling dog, and nodded.
“Did you … Did you say—”
“I said okay,” the guard replied.
“Oh!” Tim said, greatly relieved. “I’ll just step inside then. If … If that’s all right.”
He took a step forward. Then another. Even as he did so, it seemed to Tim that something was off. That only some strange misunderstanding accounted for the guard’s failing to perform an ornate martial arts throat-punch on the chubby reporter, sending him to the floor, gasping for breath and dazed. Even as Tim passed through the doorway and walked inside the suite, he still half-expected the blow to come. The man exuded a capacity for great violence. (When the door shut behind him, Tim’s first thought was of how he must pass this sentry again on the way out.)
Beyond the gatekeeper was an arena suite arrayed in the way arena suites so often were. There was a kitchenette and several serving islands where chicken wings, sausages, and burgers had been presented in large metal trays. There were also plates of fruit, and coolers stocked with soda and beer. And none of it had been touched. Absolutely none of it. There was a “wrongness” to it that quickly settled over Tim. This food was days old. The ice in the coolers had melted. The Sterno burners underneath the trays had burned out.
More detail than this was difficult for Tim to ascertain because of another unusual quality of the suite. The lights had been dimmed to a positively inconvenient degree. Enough to make it hard to get around. At first, Tim thought perhaps this had been done to emphasize the images on the three wall-mounted televisions carrying coverage of the convention below. But the figures in the room—there only seemed to be three of them—were not seated anywhere near the televisions. Rather, they were clustered together in a dark corner, near the edge of where the suite opened up to the arena-proper. They were eerily, perfectly still.
Tim approached. Despite his substantial carriage, the suite was carpeted and his footsteps made no noise. At a loss for what to do, Tim cleared his throat.
Still the three figures did not move. Still there was no response. The speaker at the convention below was a middle-aged woman (the head of a faith-based charitable organization, as Tim understood it) with a very soft voice. Tim cleared his voice a second time. Still the trio kept their backs to him. Tim found it inconceivable that they did not detect his presence. He drew even closer.
Suddenly, the figure in the center turned its head.
Tim had seen some startling things before. Anyone who worked on a website that operated in “uncensored” realms “too extreme” for the mainstream saw his share of wild and disturbing subject matter via his inbox. But this face … It was a Halloween mask. It was a special effect. It seemed not merely too old, but too exaggerated to possibly be real.
The ears and nose had grown enormous. The pair of warts on the left cheek were large as thumbs. The brow wrinkles were so deep and heavy that the top of his forehead seemed to droop down as though trying to reach the eyes. The pate was bald—nothing so bad there—but the bad toupee covering it gave the man a further strange and hideous aspect. He looked like some kind of gargoyle attempting to pass as human for the day.
Tim made an involuntary noise that was very short and very high-pitched.
“Young man, if you have something to say, I exhort you to say it!” the horrible masque intoned.
Tim was shocked into silence for a moment, but only a moment.
“Mister Van Bergen?” he asked hopefully.
The grotesque thing nodded. The two figures surrounding it also turned and looked. They were thin, nondescript men in late middle age (though they seemed positively youthful next to Van Bergen)—possibly his handlers or assistants, possibly something else. They narrowed their eyes and exchanged a quick glance. Who was this interloper, and how did he deserve to be here if he didn’t even recognize Cornelius Van Bergen on sight?
“I mean … Mister Van Bergen,” Tim quickly asserted rather than asked. “It has come to my attention that a certain East Coast news outlet has been trying to substantiate a particular set of facts regarding the next president’s plans for … members of the Uneeda Society and their ilk.”
The horrible old man turned his attention back to the convention floor. He waved the ancient gnarled claw that was his hand in a dismissive circular motion, to say that his associates could handle this one.
“You are referring to the queries from … ?” one of the men said leadingly.
Tim realized this was a test.
“From Jessica Smith,” Tim said. “As I expressed to Jay McNelis previously, if my outlet, TruthTeller, can help the campaign in any way, of course we’d want to. I may be able to reach out to Jessica and convince her to change the story or pull it entirely. She comes from a rich family, so she’s not subject to a lot of the normal inducements. But she and I have a connection. You can verify that. I think I can get her to come around.”
One of the mysterious men looked back and forth between Tim and an image of Jessica he had pulled up on his phone. Whatever the TruthTeller reporter might mean, a connection of a romantic nature was probably not what he was getting at.
“Why have you come here, really?” one of the two men said, putting his phone away. “What do you need from Mr. Van Bergen?”
“Well first of all … he hasn’t responded to Jessica?” Tim asked.
“Of course not,” one of the men hissed. His tone asked “What kind of operation do you think this is?”
“Right,” Tim said carefully. “But because she’s singled out Mr. Van Bergen, we need to be careful. Afte
r all, he’s the only other member of the Uneeda Society at the convention, and the only member of the walking dead not standing for election. I haven’t been able to raise Jay McNelis to ask how we should handle it, so obviously I wanted to check with you. I want to err on the side of safety and discretion. You know.”
There. He had done it. Tim had just mentioned Uneeda, the walking dead, and knowledge and complicity on the part of Jay McNelis. And the three recording devices secreted upon his body had captured all of it. The hidden camera in the bridge of his eyeglasses had it on video that was being instantaneously uploaded to the cloud.
The only question was what would come next.
“This is not an emergency, and this is not worth Mr. Van Bergen’s valuable time,” one of the mysterious men said firmly.
Okay, Tim thought to himself. That was a start. They hadn’t said “What the hell do you mean by the walking dead? Get out of this suite immediately!”
But Tim needed more.
“Right,” Tim said. “It’s just that Mr. McNelis was able to apprise me of how … how … let’s say nuanced the rollout of the full platform is going to be. The positioning of the undead policy elements is going to be a very careful thing, he says. I just want to ensure TruthTeller comports with that positioning. Maybe I shut my friend Jessica down completely, get her to kill the story, sure. Or maybe the best approach is to give her something that will lay the groundwork for what’s to come … in a way that connects with the objectives of the campaign? Oh, and the Uneeda Society, of course.”
Would that do it? Would they give him anything more?
For a moment, it seemed they would not. One of the men actually turned back around to watch the convention speaker, as if to signal that this matter was closed. The other man considered it for a moment, then shook his head. Yet just as he opened his mouth to say something dismissive, another voice spoke.
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